Review of Carry On Cruising (1962) by Edith N — 05 Jul 2011

The Inherent Humour of Being Trapped.

There are literally dozens of movies in this series, and essentially none of them seem to be available for viewing in the United States. (I don't know the situation in their native land.) This means, of course, that I didn't get much in the way of choice as to which one would be my entry into the series. I chose to start here instead of with [i]Carry On, Columbus![/i] because that was the last one, made over a decade after the rest had been released, because I felt that it would give me a better insight into what the series was actually like instead of what nostalgia turned it into. What I really wanted to see was one of the historically themed ones, because that was more interesting to me, but again, not the last one, because that felt off. So here we are, and if you feel I've done wrong by not starting with your favourite one, well, you can just bloody well provide me with a copy I can watch in this country.

At any rate, we are taking off on a voyage around the Mediterranean. Captain Wellington Crowther (Sid James) is an old hand at the trip, but it seems as though literally everyone else on the crew is new for the run. There is the weaselly and odious First Officer Leonard Marjoribanks (Kenneth Williams), pronounced "Marchbanks," of course. There is Doctor Arthur Binn (Kenneth Connor), who normally works at a marmalade factory. And so forth. The passengers, now, the passengers are supposed to be new at this. But our main focus is Glad Trimble (Liz Fraser) and Flo Castle (Dilys Laye), who are on the cruise with the explicit intention of gaining husbands. Naturally, there are no prospects among the passengers, with practically the only male in the whole thing being someone who never gets off the boat and just drinks whatever seems right for the country where they're docked (Ronnie Stevens). So crew members it must be.

There's not much to this movie. Wacky misunderstandings. The "always amusing" sight of women getting roaring drunk. The humourous old lady, Bridget Madderley (Esma Cannon). A cook who gets seasick when he's in the kitchen (Lance Percival). And so forth. It's a light comedy, which is honestly what I was looking for. (It's over eighty today, and writing this review has already taken over an hour.) But it's not something I would consider watching a second time. I have seen a fair number of movies about people who are crammed together for one reason or another, and while there are some I would revisit, this is not one of them. None of the characters are more than caricatures. There's a certain amount of whimsy involved, but nothing more than that. It's just some people on a boat having misunderstandings which will be resolved by the final time they dock. We know that, and we know there won't be anything else to it. It's not bad for a summer Wednesday afternoon.

I will say that it's fairly impressive the work they went to on sets, here. They built a full replica of a cruise ship, on hydraulics, so that they could have people come and go the way they would, and so they could have the ship move when it was necessary. At the same time, the dock was always the same, no matter which country they were supposedly in. But it's the stuff on ship which is more important, since we almost never see them leave anyway. Of course not--the whole point is what they're up to when they can't get away from one another. So it's much more important to have the bridge, the kitchen, the girls' cabin be accurate than it is to have the docks in Italy look distinctly different from the ones in Egypt. Or if not accurate, at least a reasonable approximation. The boat is what matters, and they knew that when they built the sets. It's to their credit that they did, and it's the only thing about this which makes me interested in seeing any of the others.

There is, of course, the fact that the title would mean something [i]very[/i] different only a few short years after this movie's release. At that, it meant something different in the United States already. After all, the United States has always been much more a car culture than the UK. Much less of the US relies on boats, too. Though, to be fair, I know more than a few people who have gone on cruises. It's just that, in the US, the traditional means of trapping people together on a vacation is a car trip. It's also, I guess, something to do with our sense of isolation, because that's mostly something you do with a small group of family, not with a large group of strangers. The closest we get to vacations with other people is tour groups where we spend a few hours in, say, the White House or on a bus around stars' homes in Beverly Hills, and once we're done, we're done and never see each other again. It's true that most of the people on cruise ships never see each other again, but it still seems more friendly.